Obama, McCain and affirmative action

In other words, McCain supports efforts to prevent my children from being discriminated against because of the color of their skin, while Barack Obama prefers to uphold disadvantaging my kids because they're white.

Obama realizes your kids already have unearned advantages because they are white and that his children--regardless of how affluent and well-educated they are--face disadvantages because they are black. Therefore he supports programs that try to alleviate that.

McCain supports efforts that will get him elected, which means as a Republican he needs to flip-flop on racial preferences because he needs to now pander to anxious whites who make up 95% of the party he represents.

Obama realizes your kids already have unearned advantages because they are white and that his children--regardless of how affluent and well-educated they are--face disadvantages because they are black.

Of course. Without quotas they won't be able to go to some Ivy on scholarship and write unreadable theses demanding more racially-based handouts.

Your kids have little chance of being discriminated against on the basis of their color.

I generally agree with many of the arguments against affirmative action, especially that it taints the achievements of all members of the group it supposedly helps. I do, however, think that very specific, very targeted remedies are acceptable as long as their impact can be measured, and they can be done away with once their goal has been reached. If something like that could be targeted to eliminate discrimination against white working class and poor people, great.

But Rod, this idea that discrimination against whites has become systemic due to affirmative action is a fallacy. Limited instances, yes. Systemic discrimination, no.

Are you going to blog about the "sort of culture" that legitimises(sic) actions like this?

I think Rod should blog on "that sort of culture" as soon as the Tennessee shooter garners as much support for his actions from like-minded fanboys as P.Z. Myers has.

"Barack and Michelle Obama's daughters should not be more privileged than the sons and daughters of white bricklayers and supermarket clerks because of the color of their skin"

Obama himself said this very thing yesterday. You seem intent on boxing Obama in a preconcieved notion. I'm still waiting to hear what his specific alternative is, but multiple times he's mentioned the need to transition to a class-based equalizing system over and against the current one.

In any case, odds are that your kids will likely never go without while hundreds of thousands of children of color will. I'm not saying that in defense of Affirmative Action, but I just can't help but roll my eyes at well-off white people who are afraid little Timmy and Susie will end up in the poor house because a scary black man took their job. I'm saying this as a white person who spent the first three years of his life going from living in a car to living in a seedy motel and back again.

We get a citation for McCain's viewpoint, but un-supported assertions about who Obama is.

Off the top of my head, in my state there's a law pushing agencies to use "historically underutilized businesses", which pointed excludes white males.

So if they push--but don't require--agencies to use minority businesses because those business are unreasonable underrepresented, how does that amount to discrimination against white people?

Actually, one of the criticism of these anti-preference laws is that they are ill-defined and lack a basis in the states where the initiatives are brought. If you go to the Arizona group's website, for instance, they don't point to any laws in Arizona that are actual preferences or even what a preference is.

Since quotas are largely a figment of imagination, they mean programs that try to help groups but don't represent any actual discrimination.

Hey Bugg, we'll know we're no longer a "racist" (your scare quotes) society when people don't keep feeling the urge to trumpet Barack Obama's middle name every damn chance they get, hoping to scare people with it because it sounds foreign, Muslim, and happens to be the same name as that guy who didn't have all those weapons of mass destruction that the Bushies said he did.

"Your kids have little chance of being discriminated against on the basis of their color"

My nephew has been on the job waiting list in a large California city's Fire Department for years. But he's a white male, not hispanic or female, so he's still on the waiting list.

"Your kids have little chance of being discriminated against on the basis of their color". Such ignorance.

Does anyone here think it possible for a Black male or female to get a job based on his/her qualifications alone? You know it may not happen often, but rest assured there are times when a person of color is just more qualified than a White Man. But, then you have some white men who get jobs because of who they know regardless of the qualifications. Case in point - George W. Bush.

I suggest that many of you need to check out the statistics as they relate to AA. When you do, you'll find that it has been White Women who have benefited most from AA.

This thread is sooooo entertaining ... and so full of myth about Affirmative Action. Everyone and their brother "Knows" someone who knows someone who was denied this or that to an "unqualified" minority; but when pressed, well, it just didn't happen.

Those that had "their" job or "their" spot "taken" by some minority, it inevitably (as in the U of Michigan cases) turns out that there were as many if not more lesser qualified white admissions.

But hey, whose whining victim now?

Of course, Obama doesn't support Affirmative Action on the basis of color "to the hilt" he supports including color along with *class* as the basis of some programs designed to foster social mobility for people who have historically been disadvantaged--that would include the children of the poor and of blue collar white and hispanic workers along with the children of the poor, blue collar, african americans who are trying to get good educations and jobs. McCain benefitted from special priviliges associated with being the white son of an admiral--does anyone think that a black man, or a white guy whose father wasn't an admiral--could have failed upwards through highschool and naval school without getting bounced for failure to perform? Rod is certainly old enough to remember when the premier anti affirmative action case, Bakke, charged that Bakke was denied a position in Medical School because "his" position was offered to a black candidate. That case left untouched the school's quota preference system for the children of alumni, always white and upper class by definition. But of course Bakke was denied a place at the school by *every person, white or black* who got one when he didn't. Since far more spaces were held open for alumni children it stands to reason that Bakke was denied his medical education by the children of white privilige, but for some reason people like Rod remember it as though it was the AA student who got the unearned privilige.

Rod should be embarrassed, but he won't be.

aimai

In answer to mole's question, it rather depends on a) the ability of the student in question (just because Asians as a group outperform other ethnic groups, it doesn't follow that this individual student does) and b) whether the elite college had policies in place that discriminated against Asians, either by accident or design.

See, that's the thing that gets me. If we had magical merit-based jobs, where everyone got the job solely on their skill-set, I could see what conservatives are whining about...but we manifestly don't have that.

BUT...when you are denied application to a specific university, job, or other discretionary placement, the typical response from admissions/hiring managers would be "you didn't meet our admissions standards" or "we selected someone more qualified." Affirmative Action is a policy that, when practiced, refutes both of these statments.

Same with colleges. I don't want to hear a single complaint about affirmative action in college until we get rid of legacy admissions. That's just absurd. If anyone is going to get into a school despite not having the highest grades or best transcript, it really should be the people who were more likely to have been dealt a poor hand to start with, instead of the people who were dealt winning hands and blew them.

I think almost all people support the removal of legacy admissions to college. To your point earlier, no one should be admitted or giveng placement without having met the standards of the position applied to. That is how you refine a merit-based system: you make it solely based on merit.

The rub here could be that PRIVATE institutions like businesses and some colleges should be able to hire and place whoever they want on whatever grounds they want. I actually have little issue with that. They are responsible for their reputations, and if Cornell doesn't want accept the white guy with better grades than a minority with worse grades...that's their perogative. These schools and businesses SHOULD NOT GET A DIME OF TAX MONEY, though.

Of course, as I've always said, affirmative action actually is stupid. It's what happens when you teach liberals to do things with progressive tools, instead of liberal tools. See, progressives want to help the downtrodden, and they do it at the expense of others. (And I say this as a progressive.) They will raise taxes, taking money from people, so that the poorest segment of society will not starve to death. Hopefully, the 'expense' to others is bearable.

Now, thanks to liberals and progressives being jammed together in the same party, liberals have been using progressive tools without realizing it. But what liberals have failed to realize that the point in fighting for civil rights isn't to 'equalize' the amount of rights everyone has, it's to provide maximum rights, even if that results in uneven rights for a while.

To expand upon your general point, and the point that libertariain-minded folks might support, would be that Progressive policies have ZERO rights to be implemented and enforced in private institutions such as businesses and some colleges. While it's not overtly practiced in industry, Affirmative Action is definitely an established hiring practice in most major sectors. It is an overtly practiced admissions policy in most private colleges, and that doesn't even beging to address the other areas it seeps into, like financial aid.

I'm definitely against 99% of Progressive policies, but they can be justified in a public setting. They can't be justified in a private one.

Liberals need to realize there's a difference between saying to people 'We'll need a little bit more in taxes this year to help the lowest strata of society' and 'No, you specifically don't get to go to law school because all the non-minority slots are full'. Even without any mention of the civil rights issues, small amounts of taxes on everyone are quantifiable different than people being denied specific opportunities, which can't help but make them pissed in a way that another $20 a year in taxes won't.

Meanwhile, such methods are, ironically, profoundly nonliberal, as they remove rights from people who had them before in an attempt to grant them to people who didn't

Here's where you blend liberal ideals to much into social democratism (or Progressivism). There should be no activism in liberal support of Affirmative Action; I believe an honest classical or neo-liberal would support AA on the grounds that personal choice is still a major factor in hiring and admissions practices, and that subconcious racial preference exists in humanity, America is a racially complex country, thus a benign AA policy that brings this to the forefront allows recognition of a flaw in our evolving meritocracy. It should be a passive policy, like a guideline.

Progressivism (in my view) supports AA as a social mandate to produce quotas in hiring and admissions practices. Social democrats continue to live the lie that we are all inherently proportionally capable irrespective of culture and genetics, American merit has a predominantly a causal relationship to birth-rights, thus the affects must be reverted by agressive systemic regulation. It's not a reminder of unacknowledged race preferences, it's a statment that the government should not rest until proportional representation in educational statistics, admissions & hiring practices, wage earning, etc...is homogenous in race (and gender and anything else they can think of).

If Barack Obama came out tomorrow and supported AA on the grounds that he will "not rest" until there are as many minorities graduating for tier 1 universities as white people, or until there was economic uniformity across all races, the New York Times would laud him for his prescient view of racial inequality and social injustice. Progressives would cheer his very existence (like they already do). However, his statement would be a full-fledged support of discrimination in hiring and admissions practices against white people (mostly men), because that's all AA really is.

Appreciate Nick the Greek's response to my earlier post. Guess I was trying to be cute and indirect and wound up being clumsy in attempting to get my point across. What I mean to say is this. Rod states (rightly so I believe) that his kids will be disadvantaged by the sort of programs Obama supports. Some who share Obama's view deny that white kids are hurt by this process and that they will still roll merrily along in society because of "unearned advantages" associated with their majority status. A more straightforward defense of affirmative action might proceed along these lines: Yeah, your kid gets disadvantaged by this, but too bad. It's just collateral damage in an attack on long standing societal inequities, discrimination, and affirmative action for whites (poster child George W. Bush). Now assume for the moment that this is all valid. What about the Asians who, being over-represented in parts of the academic world, are also disadvantaged by programs that give a leg up to other minorities. The "yeah, but too bad" defense of these programs that might carry some weight when applied to whites and the history of white privilege doesn't seem germane in the case of Asians.

mattc
I'm definitely against 99% of Progressive policies, but they can be justified in a public setting. They can't be justified in a private one.

More to the point, I don't think they're a good idea at all when they help one specific person at the expense of another specific person. That is disastrous to support of such programs.

Some people will grumble, and others will think it a good idea, when the government takes a little from everyone and uses it to help people. This is well and good. Too much grumbling and obviously it's something society doesn't want, so it will go away.

But they will raise holy hell when they specifically are cut in front of in line. As will all their friends, and everyone who identifies with them.

... It's not a reminder of unacknowledged race preferences, it's a statment that the government should not rest until proportional representation in educational statistics, admissions & hiring practices, wage earning, etc...is homogenous in race (and gender and anything else they can think of).

This is where I have to part ways with that thought. People are not stupid. People know admissions and hiring are zero sum games. Someone wins, someone loses. (Wages, while in theory a zero sum game, are something that people are willing to go along with equality in.)

And education, while not a zero sum game, the goal is not that everyone receive an equal education...it's that everyone receive the best. Yes, the worse off schools should be improved first, but that's just simple triaging, as the difference in end cost between F and C students is much larger to society than the cost difference between B and A students.

This is exactly the sort of weird and destructive influence that progressive thought has had on liberal thought. The goal of liberals is not to 'even out' society, it is to correct injustices. Maybe that should extend to injustices in private industry, but extending it to specific slots for jobs and education is just absurd.

While that's going on, us progressives work on 'leveling' society so that 20% aren't stuck in some hereditary underclass, which we will do by the slight injustice of taking money from everyone else and building steps up for that 20%. Conservatives will complain, but have much much less traction if people can't say 'I would have gone to college if I wasn't white'.

This is why the liberals are supposed to be fighting the progressives. Progressives supposed to say 'The poor needs some extra help' and liberals are supposed to say 'That's unfair to people who started the same as them but made something of themselves' and we meet somewhere in the middle. But now liberals are using progressive tactics and progressives are thinking about things in terms of liberal framing and it's all massive confusion.

"...All men are created equal..."

- Source: Declaration of Independence (1776)

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." - Complete quote

These words were written by 'white aristocrats' that owned 'black slaves'.

They knew full well that they never fully intended to meet the obligations of the contractual agreement that they had entered into as they later signed the Constitution, a 'contractual agreement' defining obligations between individuals and the state.

...After 200+ years of institutionalized racism, its nice to see that we as a nation are doing something, anything, to pay reparations to the very people once considered property.